2007-10-10 Samsung YP-U3J without Media Player 10

Why not reinvent the wheel and create a protocol for exchanging files between the desktop and the mp3-player? Well you could handle this like any other USB Stick with a FAT32 filesystem, but hey, that’s too simple. And that’s maybe why Microsoft and Canon announced MTP some time ago. Or they wanted only to make your life less comfortable. How does it look like in practise?

Today I got a crispy Samsung YP-U3J mp3-player. It’s written Stylish USB Direct Music Player on the back of the package. Well. It is stylish. And it plays music. Even OGG (that’s one reason I got that stilo finally). But, hmm, it does only work with MTP. No direct copying of files. You know, Microsoft propagates this as a “cool device” and like “wow OSes” you can imagine how overwhelming great this is. First of all, the software told me I need to install Media Player 10. Are you kidding? I hate Windows Media Player. I phone Tech Support and they told me: If you don’t wan’t to install Media Player 10 then you need to send the gadget back. Well, Linux is just right around the corner and guess what: No problem to transfer files to it with libmtp and amarok. All you need is some configuration. Check google for more.

Whoo. That wasn’t fun enough for me. So I switched back to my windows box and checked out the Setup of Media Player 10. I could not imagine that you need to install the player to get the MTP Support into windows. And guess what: you do not need. You only need to get the setup file of Media Player 10. Infact this isn’t only the Setup for Media Player in some other “I don’t want to upgrade bad Software any longer” version, it contains some more or less other setups defined in .inf files. Extract the .exe with commandline switches /T:FULLPATH /C into the speicified path. Then install WPD10.inf. Maybe you need to enable a service afterwards (windows-usermode-driverframework or similar). Then plug the Samsung into your USB and if windows asks for a driver point to that FULLPATH again. Voila. That’s all. Your device is now installed and recorgnized. Now each time you plug your device in, even Media Player 9 can transfer files to that little thingy. Ups. This just for the proof of concept that you do not need Media Player 10 to be installed to transfer files to that device under windows. But it does not work out that well. Luckily I do not need to care that much about these problems any longer because the working way with Amarok is just some clicks away. Maybe someone else might want to dig deeper.

Und die Moral von der Geschicht: Do not buy products that say their system requirement is Windows XP/Vista only. Even if they play OGG. Why not this one that has support for not only Win32 in general but also Apple and Linux.

Update

• Linux: der samsung yp-u3 unter linux – Deutsch: Anleitung und weitere Infos zum Betrieb des Players unter Windows.
• Windows: mediamonkey is a mediaplayer for windows. it’s MTP support is better then the one in media player 9. I could use it to transfer files to the device more properly.
• Windows: Media Transfer Protocol Porting Kit by Microsoft containing a generic MTP driver for Windows 9x and Windows XP (The Kit does run on Windows, More Info).